On the heels of a heart-wrenching report about how pharmaceutical drugs have infected the waters of our planet so egregiously that they’re causing unexpected and irreversible mutations in animals, a film like Under Paris actually doesn’t seem that far-fetched. The fundamental premise is this: a shark, formerly of the mako species, evolves so rapidly that it can survive in a freshwater climate like the Seine and is capable of parthenogenesis—reproducing sans a male—without even reaching an age of sexual maturity. What could possibly go wrong? Well, the entire design of Xavier Gens’ movie is that whatever can go wrong (ecologically, biologically, evolutionarily, bureaucratically, etc.) will go wrong. And oh how it does.
It all starts “innocently” enough (as most operations that go tits-up do) when a team of marine researchers led by Sophia Assalas (Bérénice Bejo, a long way from 2011’s The Artist) goes in search of the erstwhile mako shark named Lilith that they tagged several months before. Trying to find a signal from her near the Great Pacific garbage patch (a title that makes it sound like a “grandiose” site as opposed to a study in what level of atrocity humans are capable of), they catch sight of it when two of Sophia’s team members, including her husband, Chris (Yannick Choirat), dive into the thick of the garbage. Only Lilith doesn’t quite look like the shark they remember. Instead, she’s grown at an alarming rate. And she’s feeling triggered enough to attack when they try to take a skin sample to investigate further into what might have caused her marked alteration. That’s what really sets her off, because, before that, she was doing just fine swimming amongst the humans without attacking them.
Indeed, one of the many points reiterated throughout Under Paris (apart from the trope that lesbians and “militant” environmentalists always have dyed blue hair) is the oft-forgotten fact that sharks don’t attack humans “unprovoked.” Though it doesn’t really feel that way based on the number of shark-horror movies there are—the modern progenitor being, of course, Jaws. Granted, there were some errant movies (e.g., White Death and The Sharkfighters) about sharks and their horrors before Jaws “attacked” in 1975, but nothing so effective as to rightfully earn the tagline, “You’ll never go in the water again.”
Under Paris seeks to remind people of that fear-inducing sentiment just in time for the summer—and the Olympics. To be sure, the moment of its release feels like a pointed dig at the self-aggrandizing event, which, yes, included a “billion-dollar cleanup” of the Seine (wherein various Olympic events will take place). This is the kind of money that the fictional mayor (played by Anne Marivin) in Under Paris is also sure to bring up when mentioning that her “hands are tied” vis-à-vis canceling the spectacle (a generic “triathlon,” not the Olympics) for the sake of public safety. Needless to say, it smacks of Jaws’ Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) insisting that the beach stays open because summertime is big business for Amity Island. And if capitalists can’t stand anything, it’s losing out on big business. The same goes for la maire de Paris, telling Angèle (Aurélia Petit), the head of the police fluviale (a.k.a. Brigade Fluviale de Paris), that she needs to simply “figure something out,” “deal with it,” etc. in terms of getting rid of the shark because she ain’t canceling her event for shit.
By this time (and a few years after grappling with the calamity that befell her crew), Sophia—locks presently shorn to indicate she’s been through it (another hair cliché)—has been called upon for her expertise on sharks in general and Lilith in particular. Already alerted to Lilith’s presence in the Seine by Mika (Léa Léviant), the aforementioned “militant” environmentalist with blue hair, Sophia has become a reluctant part of the police bid to “stop” Lilith (as if). Along with other activists at S.O.S. (Save Our Seas), Mika has been tracking the “Beacon 7” signal for a while now, seeing fit to remotely turn off certain sea creatures’ signals when they feel the animals’ lives are in danger from hunters or other assorted assholes.
To be sure, at the heart of Under Paris is the message that animal life is just as valuable as human life, and that the merciless cruelty toward animals is also a direct result of why the planet is in the state it’s in. This, too, ties into the incredibly fucked-up fact that it’s taken so long for anyone to acknowledge the true extent of animal consciousness. What’s more, if people actually did treat other living beings humanely, the environment wouldn’t be in the state of disarray it’s in. Or, more accurately, the state of decline. Of course, the cheeseball manner in which this sentiment is presented (e.g., having Mika make a video for the internet that everyone is supposedly rapt with) is in keeping with many of the quintessentially French cheeseball moments of the movie. Including a requisite romance between Sophia and one of the police officers, Adil (Nassim Lyes).
To accentuate a connection that isn’t really there, Gens is sure to “build the rapport” by focusing the camera in on a picture that Adil has on his desk. He stares at it “sadly,” taking in the sight of himself with his fellow infantrymen after Googling Sophia’s name and seeing that she, too, suffered the loss of her own “battalion,” as it were. So obviously, they can easily bond through their vast knowledge of trauma. Even if Sophia initially thinks that Adil is an insensitive pig. But hey, as it is quoted via a title card at the beginning of Under Paris, “The species that survive aren’t the strongest species, nor are they the most intelligent, but rather the ones who best adapt to change.” Darwin didn’t know it at the time, but he was also, evidently, referring to settling on a romance with “whoever” in a crisis situation.
In any case, the continual attempts at trying to wield “logic” as a means to discredit the possibility that a shark could really be in the Seine is brought up in the form of “mais, c’est impossible!”-type questions from various characters, usually directed at Sophia (though even she is wont to pose similarly skeptical questions to Mika for a brief period). For example, Adil demanding (as a means to discredit the very idea), “Why would it come to Paris?” First of all, for the same reason as anyone else: to see the sights and enjoy the food. Sophia is quick with her response, “You never asked that about the orca or the beluga.” This line referring to the two types of whales that have found themselves marooned in the Seine within the past two years. In other words, it’s not all that uncommon “these days” for unexpected species to drift into waters where they aren’t ordinarily found.
What’s different about this, clearly, is that Lilith is not only surviving in the freshwater Seine, but ostensibly thriving. And here, too, it reiterates the notion that, more than Under Paris asking viewers to “suspend disbelief,” it’s asking them to open their eyes to the very patent reality that none of the old “rules” about the environment apply any longer. Humanity has seen fit to fuck that up well and good.
So, no, Under Paris is less about the, er, depths that shark movies go in order to invoke the “suspension of belief clause” and more about being yet another ecological warning/harbinger that will go far more unnoticed than Mika’s earnest video to “just” make a change for the sake of animal life everywhere.
Then there is the added “new fear unlocked” element when the role of previously unactivated WWII shells potentially going off at the worst possible moment and in the worst possible location comes to fruition (because, again, in Under Paris [and life itself], whatever can go wrong will go wrong). And all because of, ironically/appropriately, rogue military interference. Alas, even though the ceaseless attempts to “control nature” end up backfiring spectacularly, it still can’t stop the mayor from registering reality until it makes direct contact with her entire body. In this regard, too, Under Paris trolls bureaucracy in a manner that only the French can—for who knows better about the rigidity of bureaucratic red tape than they do (apart from Kafka)?
Even so, the mayor is still earnest in her declaration, “Paris is—and always will be—a celebration!” Triumphantly announcing as much to the crowd just before the triathlon is about to begin. It’s a scene that bears an eerie sort of prescience for things to come at the 2024 Olympics. Not least of which is that, no matter what, people will be obliviously celebrating in the midst of innumerable and unfathomable world catastrophes, both environmental and humanitarian.
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